Valentine's Shirts

Jerel still refers to Valentine's Day as "that stupid made-up holiday" but I still make him observe it, even if it is grudgingly.  Because chocolate given grudgingly still tastes delicious.  Anyway, in honor of the upcoming all-about-love holiday, I made these cute little shirts for the kids.  Originally Zay's was going to be a monster one and Eliza's was going to be different.  But I remembered how much Zay LOVES wearing things that match Eliza, so I decided she'd get a monster too.  I followed a tutorial I found here   but of course I haven't painted the words on mine yet.  Let's be serious, I probably never will get around to it.  Anyway, both kids seem to like them and they're both a size too big so I can make them wear them forever!

PS--this is what I do when I'm supposed to be doing taxes

Our life-changing magnet

So I saw this online and they were putting some together for Super Saturday, but I couldn't go. I ordered all the pieces and finally got around to making mine.  It ended up being one of the most annoying craft projects I've ever done....although if I did one again I could avoid all of those problems, so don't let that deter you!  I made mine a little different from the one here, mostly because I never have a week where all of my shopping needs will fit on one little post-it note so I wanted room for a bigger list.  Anyway, the way it works is we have little strips of paper with a common dinner written on each one.  Every Sunday, Jerel picks 2 things he wants to eat that week, I pick 2 things, Zay picks one thing, we have smoothies one night, and leftovers one night.  On my menu item strips I also wrote down the cookbook & page number for the recipe.  This way even though I do the shopping and Jerel does the cooking we can make sure we have what we need.  It's been handy so far.  Partly because almost every night Jerel would say "What do you want for dinner?" and I would say "I don't care." and he would try to think of something that sounded good, but since he doesn't like to eat he'd never think of anything, and even if we did come up with an idea by that time it was usually too late to cook anyway...So now we have all 7 meals picked out and as long as nothing perishable is about to perish we go ahead and switch it around how we feel like during the week.  So here's what mine looks like: 

I have a new addiction

It's Pinterest.  Have you heard of it?  I just signed up recently and it's so fun!  It's a website where you can "pin" pictures of things you want to do, things you want to make, things you want to eat, etc.  Then you can go to your page and it'll quickly link you back to the source.

One thing I pinned was this cute chore chart for toddlers.  I've been wanting Isaiah to start doing some chores but I haven't figured out a good way to track it.  Here's the chart I saw:

I like that it is simple and that it uses pictures of the chores rather than words...as advanced as he is, Zay isn't reading yet :)  The woman who made this one said her kids put stickers on when they do each chore.  I made mine a little easier by putting a dot for each chore so Zay wouldn't have to try to figure out where on the big blank part her should put a sticker.  Then, because I am so cheap, I am going to laminate mine so I can use it over and over (either by marking it with dry erase pens, or by just peeling off the stickers, whichever ends up being less annoying).

I also changed the colors (which meant remaking the whole thing, except I copied her cute chore pics) so they would match my new menu board (which reminds me, I need to do a post about my super cute menu board). Anyway, here's the one I made: